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Outstanding character actor Lance Henriksen boasted a wonderfully cragged face and graveled voice that he earned through rugged real world experience gained prior to beginning his prolific screen career at the age of 32. From the very start, he enjoyed collaborations with some of the leading filmmakers of the time, including Sidney Lumet, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. In fact, it was Cameron who initially envisioned Henriksen in the role of the catchphrase-spouting killer robot in "The Terminator" (1984). And although he was only seen in that film in a much smaller part, Cameron came through with another memorable character for him to embody in the smash hit "Aliens" (1986). From there it was on to a near constant output of work in films such as "Near Dark" (1987), "Johnny Handsome" (1989), "Alien3" (1992), "Hard Target" (1993), and "The Quick and the Dead" (1995). On television he headlined a series of his own as ex-FBI profiler Frank Black in the critically lauded, but ratings-challenged "Millennium" (Fox, 1996-99). Later career roles included voice work in video games and on animated television series, as well as turns in films like "AVP: Alien vs. Predator" (2004) and "Appaloosa" (2008). While the vast majority of character actors blended into the background of the public consciousness, garnering little name recognition with audiences, Henriksen managed to become a sort of working man's movie star, delivering performances just as iconic as those of the megawatt stars he appeared alongside.Born Lance James Henriksen on May 5, 1940, in New York City, he was the son of Margueritte, a waitress and aspiring model, and James Henriksen, a Norwegian merchant seaman and boxer who went by the apt and intimidating nickname of "Icewater." As a toddler, Henriksen was raised primarily by his single mother, after his parents divorced when he was just two years old. The very definition of a "latchkey kid" by the age of five, he was frequently truant from school and ran away from home often. Hoping to impart a work ethic and skills that would serve him well in his later years, Henriksen's seafaring father took his son along with him for one of his many voyages, leaving the boy with relatives on the island of Borneo for three years, before he eventually returned home to New York. At age 12, Henriksen had had enough of school and began traveling the highways and railways of America, during which time the young wanderer had several run-ins with the law. One such occurrence took place in Tucson, AZ, where movie tough guy Lee Marvin just happened to be filming a project. Fascinated by the production process, the 16-year-old Henriksen - jailed for vagrancy at the time - wrangled an uncredited part as a member of a chain gang in the picture. It was then that he realized his true calling.Although the stage held great fascination, Henriksen, like his father before him, found the siren call of the sea too strong to resist. He shipped out as a part of the crew on a Swedish freighter and then switched to a windjammer sailing through the Bahamas during a period he would later describe as the best time of his life. A three-year stint in the Navy followed, proceeded by another two years as a Merchant Marine before Henriksen - by now an accomplished and self-taught painter and sculptor as well - once more returned to New York. There, in 1969, he studied performance for a time with the renowned Actors Studio and honed his craft further with his off-Broadway stage debut in a production of Eugene O'Neill's "The O'Neill Sea Plays." One serious stumbling block for the Henriksen, an academic drop-out, was the fact that he was illiterate. Through sheer force of will and determination, the aspiring 30-year-old actor taught himself to read from scripts of films that he was auditioning for with the help of several friends. It was two years later that he made his official feature film debut with a sizable role in the little-seen, Minnesota-set action-adventure